• cheap eats,  lower east side,  pizza,  restaurant reviews,  vegetarian-friendly

    Speedy Romeo Pizza Review – New York – Lower East Side

    Dinner last night Speedy Romeo, and my friends and I could not stop talking about how good it was! I've heard good things about this pizzeria for years but didn't have a reason to visit until we went to the @dvnny1 gallery opening and needed something for second dinner. We started with the mozzarella appetizer with wood-fired butternut squash, raisins, brown butter, and toast. Then we had the St. Louie pie with pepperoni, sausage, and pickled chilis, and the Kind Brother with bechamel sauce, wild mushroom, smoked mozzarella, egg, and sage. We still weren't full, so we had the Dangerfield with bechamel sauce, pork-veal meatballs, ricotta, basil, and garlic chips.…

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  • 5,  cheap eats,  chinese,  lower east side,  restaurant reviews

    Mission Chinese Food: Crazy Spicy, Crazy Delicious

    The first reviews of San Franciso’s Mission Chinese Food outpost here in NYC were written by professional critics and were, by my estimation, universally adoring. The New York Times said James Beard Rising Star Chef award-winner Danny Bowien “does to Chinese food what Led Zeppelin did to the blues. His cooking both pays respectful homage to its inspiration and takes wild, flagrant liberties with it”. The blog reviews that came soon after were less excited. I read complaints about the prices, which range from $4 for the vinegar peanuts to $14.50 for the mapo la mian. I read complaints about how everything was overwhelmingly spicy. Then I read complaints about…

  • cheap eats,  chinese,  good for groups,  lower east side,  vegetarian-friendly

    Congee Village: Craveable Chinese

    I know it’s not couth to admit this, but I don’t care much for Chinese food. I love the ponzus and wasabis of Japan. I love the chilis and kaffir leaves of Thailand. I love the, well, everything of India. I love Vietnamese, Cambodian, Iranian, and Korean. But when I think of Chinese food, I think of brown sauce. To me, it’s bland and sugary and does nothing to make plain chicken any more exciting. If I’m eating Chinese, I’m going to avoid the brown sauce by ordering sweet and sour chicken–because breading automatically makes things 100% more delicious–but I know that sweet and sour chicken is the last thing…

  • celebrity chef,  cheap eats,  filipino,  lower east side,  restaurant reviews,  thai

    Opening Week at Pig and Khao

    My friend Ash, a food blogger in her own right, heard about Pig and Khao (get it? cow?) from her sister, who must have a Google alert for the words “pig face salad” to have found out about this place so fast. We detoured from our already-scheduled dinner in Ktown last night and headed to the Lower East Side instead to catch this Filipino/Thai collaboration between former “Top Chef” contestant Leah Cohen and the Fatty Crew (of Fatty Crab and Fatty ‘Cue) on its second night in business. Cutest pig butt ever, am I right? The promise of bottomless tap beer in the garden was tempting, but I couldn’t resist…

  • 4.5,  american (new),  celebrity chef,  jeans-appropriate,  lower east side,  michelin-starred,  restaurant reviews,  wine-paired menu

    wd-50 Attempts the Reinvention

    wd~50 is one of the first restaurants my boyfriend and I visited once we agreed that while some couples exercise together and some couples vacation together, we were going to be a couple who ate really fantastically over-the-top meals together. We celebrated our second anniversary with a few savory courses and the five-course dessert tasting and then went back for the full tasting menu, which included dishes that we still talk about years later as iconic examples of molecular gastronomy. When we heard that the menu format had changed to celebrate wd-50’s ninth anniversary, we knew it was time to go back again. The “From the Vault” menu is five…

  • cafe,  chelsea,  lower east side,  restaurant reviews,  sweets

    Doughnut Plant and Its Impossible-to-Pronounce Treats

    You know how I have a blog? That’s called donuts4dinner? Well, until a couple of weekends ago, I had never been to Doughnut Plant. Dunkin Donuts, where the doughnuts come stale and in ultra-boring flavors and always seem way more delicious in my mind than they actually are? All the time. Doughnut Plant, where the doughnuts are continuously made fresh while you watch and come in flavors you’ve never seen before and are actually more delicious than you expect? Never. I won’t tell you all of the things my boyfriend and I had already consumed during our walk around Chinatown and the Lower East Side that day, but suffice it…

  • 4.5,  great for dates,  jeans-appropriate,  lower east side,  restaurant reviews,  tapas,  vegetarian-friendly

    Order Everything at The Stanton Social – Tapas – Lower East Side

    My friend Anthony and I were out taking photos in Chinatown one Thursday night, when we decided to consult good, ol’ Yelp for something good to eat. There were so many four- and five-star options in the Lower East Side that it was hard to choose, but the small plates and small prices of The Stanton Social appealed to us and our wannabe-struggling-artist sensibilities. Both the dining room downstairs and all of the tables upstairs were full, so we were ushered to the lounge area by the very friendliest Pennsylvania-born server ever to work in New York City. The long, low couches and tiny tables made a fine dining area…

  • italian,  lower east side,  restaurant reviews

    Meatball Shop – Italian – Lower East Side

    It was just a couple of months ago that my boyfriend found a rudimentary menu for the soon-to-be famous Meatball Shop, and now the place has totally blown up into what you might call a phenomenon. And I love a gimmick as much as the next guy, so a co-worker and I rode the bus from our office in Battery Park up to the Lower East Side recently to give the balls a go. The restaurant itself is all dark wood and old-timey feel, very small with a storefront entirely made of glass so that it gets plenty of natural light and air. The kitchen takes up the entire back…

  • 5,  american (new),  food porn,  lower east side,  offbeat eats,  restaurant reviews

    Restaurant Review: wd-50

    Evidently finally seeing my review of our first dinner at wd~50 made my boyfriend crave some foams and powders, so before we left for Christmas vacation in our respective home states, we made a reservation to return. The only time we could get on Saturday night, even with a few weeks notice, was 6 p.m. Which means that despite the terrible economy, New Yorkers are still lining up to pay $200 each for dinner. We were oddly seated in the same exact table as last time, which happens to have a straight view into the kitchen, where we saw chef/owner Wylie Dufresne talking to Chef de Cuisine Jon Bignelli (who…

  • 5,  american (new),  lower east side,  offbeat eats,  restaurant reviews

    Restaurant Review: wd-50

    It was more than a year ago that I announced my impending trip to wd~50 on my personal blog and got a load of comments from my mostly-Ohioan readership that mostly talked about how ridiculously small and not-at-all-like-real-food the dish in the picture I posted was. I was skeptical, too, to be honest, but it turned out that the meal was fantastic–really, really fantastic–surprising, playful, and memorable. It must have overwhelmed me so much, though, that I failed to write about it, and my boyfriend has been bothering me about it ever since. Now that we have a January reservation to try the current tasting menu, I figured I owed…